Nvidia inside: Hands on with Audi, Lamborghini, and Tesla

Nvidia now has partnerships with 14 car makers—we took three examples for a spin.

Come, explore the depths of the Lamborghini Aventador's infotainment system! Ha ha, just kidding. You'll be too focused on trying to leave the speed limit far behind without a cop noticing.

Megan Geuss

SANTA CLARA, CA—Outside of the visitor check-in on Nvidia's campus, three gorgeous cars—the Audi RS7, the Lamborghini Aventador, and the Tesla Model S—are parked, attracting the occasional gawking employee. Although Nvidia's partnership with the three car makers isn't anything new, we welcomed the chance to see just what the tech in these high-end cars is really like.

We also wanted to see what Nvidia hopes to offer car makers who are designing systems that will need to be cutting edge when their vehicles hit the market—a difficult task given the length of the automotive development cycle.

The car maker's challenge to stay ahead in tech is a topic that Ars is going to be revisiting over the next several months, so what better way to get our feet wet than to talk with the chip maker that has become synonymous with high-performance GPUs? Over the past five years, Nvidia has been making a big push into automotive technology, hoping to power not only the graphic information displays and entertainment systems that have become increasingly popular in cars, but also to get in on the ground floor of the self-driving systems of the future.

Currently, the chipmaker has partnerships with 14 car makers, from Volkswagen Group subsidiaries like Audi and Porsche, to BMW and Mini, to Peugeot and Tesla.

Connected in the driver’s seat

We hopped into the Audi RS7 first, taking a moment to go through the paces on the car's dashboard navigation and information display. The RS7 relies on Audi's Multi-Media Interface (MMI), in which the driver uses a control dial and a handful of side buttons to navigate through the display screen, rather than use a touch screen like many cars today do.

The RS7's system relies on a pre-Tegra automotive-grade processor to run Audi Connect, the company's proprietary companion software. This is hardly Nvidia's most powerful chip in the RS7, but the new Audi A3 does ship with Tegra 2 processors. The company hopes to sell more and more car makers on adopting its Visual Computing Module (VCM), which is a more powerful System on Chip (SoC) that's modular, so it can be easily upgraded to Nvidia's latest processor to keep up with increases in computing power. (Keep in mind, however, that this is designed for a car maker to keep ahead of the competition, not really for a customer to upgrade the processor in his or her car like one would upgrade an old CPU.)

In the car, Danny Shapiro, Nvidia's senior director of automotive, showed off the speed with which Audi Connect can call up cloud-stored information, particularly with respect to navigation. He pulled up directions to a restaurant and jazz club in Oakland called Yoshi's, and the display impressively rendered the map layout, responding to our dial turns as we zoomed in right up to street view.

Shapiro also noted that Audi contracts with numerous data aggregation companies to provide geographically aware information about the price of gas at refueling stations nearby, and even to show you whether there's still parking available in structures and lots in your area, and how much that parking costs. Suddenly, my decade-old Toyota Matrix started looking like a covered wagon.

Megan Geuss

You could zoom down into a map by turning the Audi's MMI dial.

Megan Geuss

You could zoom down into a map by turning the Audi's MMI dial.

Megan Geuss

What shall we search for today?

Megan Geuss

Need gas? Don't pick the nearest station like a sucker.

I got in the driver's seat at that point and drove the RS7 down to the 101 freeway for a little test drive. I always find it a bit difficult to process new in-dash layouts the first couple of times I drive a car, so although I found it distracting, getting from Google Maps to, say, music controls was easier for me to navigate with the MMI layout than in cars with touch-screen displays or with displays whose buttons are right next to the screen. (In particular, I recently spent a weekend driving a rental Chevy Cruze, and I've been in Priuses with the side-button layout. Leaning forward and making sure your finger makes contact with the correct button or screen space is an incredible distraction, in my opinion.) In the RS7, there seemed to be little or no lag between my inputs through the MMI system to the display on the center console.

The car felt premium in every way when it came to add-on features, despite it running old hardware. In the driver's seat, I noticed that Audi Connect lists not only navigation instructions in the center console, but also the speed limit in the area, so there's no more hunting for a sign while keeping your eyes peeled for cops.

The car also comes equipped with a heads up display that projects your current speed as well as turn-by-turn navigation at the bottom of your windshield. Ars has played with these types of devices before and had mixed feelings, but the displayed instructions were bright and unobtrusive in my opinion.

I should mention, the RS7 I was sitting in had 3G connectivity, but Shapiro assured me that newer models will be shipping with 4G. Our car was connected via Verizon, and apparently Audi will give you a free data plan for six months when you buy the car; after that you have to fend for yourself.

The console also has a row of two SD card readers and one SIM card reader beneath the display so you can play media (like music playlists, or, when the car isn’t in motion, movies) off external memory.

I parked the Audi because it was time for the Lamborghini. When it comes to computing, the Aventador runs what is basically the same kind of hardware that's in the RS7; Lamborghini is owed by Audi AG, so the MMI dial layout is largely the same, and the display is powered by—you guessed it—Nvidia.

The Aventador also has an identical row of ports for two SD cards as the RS7 does, but these ports are placed down by the driver’s right leg. Hopefully you’ll plan rest stops accordingly so that you won’t need a passenger to change the cards too often.

To be honest, after driving around in the RS7 I took a couple of swipes at the Aventador's system and realized I had seen all this before. But then I realized I was riding in a half-million-dollar car and sort of forgot my feature-focused line of inquiry and just let myself feel the ride. Unfortunately, if you only have five minutes to drive down route 101 and back, many of the mysteries of the 700-horsepower engine will remain unrevealed to you. Alas.

Enlarge/ The Aventador's instrument clusters show that it was hot as all heck outside in Santa Clara earlier this week.

Megan Geuss

While we were driving, a Lamborghini product specialist said that consumers of such a car are increasingly interested in the kind of computing power that their prospective vehicle runs, but he assured me that it's far from the first thing that a person thinking about buying an Aventador is looking for. That makes sense, as the sports car basically runs a previous-generation version of Audi Connect, without many of the bells and whistles that we experienced in the first test drive.

After a jaunt in that machine, Ars hopped in the Tesla Model S. We’ve already reviewed the Model S extensively, so there’s no need to go into it in too much detail, but we will note that the interior of the car eschews a center console for a giant 17" touch-screen display, which you can use to bring up driving directions, navigate the Web, and play music and radio. The display is capable of split-screen view, and certain functions (like turn-by-turn driving directions) can be called up and will appear both on the center display and the instrument cluster, which are powered by a Tegra 3 and Tegra 2 processor, respectively.

In our hands-on, the two processors talked to each other quickly, without much lag. Scrolling through Ars in full screen mode on the center display, however, did suffer from jerky scrolling and failed to register some touches.

Enlarge/ The digital instrument cluster can show all kinds of information.

Megan Geuss

Tesla’s Model S uses Nvidia’s VCM, so the electric car maker has the ability to upgrade the SoC on the module without changing the car’s design. Newer Model S’ may well contain more recent SoCs if Tesla so chooses.

On the road to compute power

Although the cars we tested were using older technology, Nvidia stressed that it was in the best position to provide all of a car’s graphics needs in the coming decade. The company has competition from the likes of Qualcomm and ARM, which are also developing power-sipping chips that can still do on-the-spot navigation, stream radio, post locations to Facebook, and could eventually detect other cars, and even people, in the car’s driving space.

Danny Shapiro and Alan Hall, Nvidia's Senior Communications Manager for Automotive, told Ars that the move for Nvidia into the automotive space was a natural one, as car developers have long used the company’s GPUs to design cars and to do fluid dynamic and aerodynamic modeling. Now Nvidia wants auto manufacturers to rely on it for all aspects of the business, from powering consoles in showrooms that allow prospective buyers to build customized cars, to allowing drivers to pick their own skin on digital instrument clusters above the steering wheel.

Enlarge/ In the future, you can make the tachometer purple and the fuel gauge green something!

Megan Geuss

The company also talked up its Jetson Development Kit, which is currently shipping to a select group of developers, suppliers, and automakers. The kit was made to help car manufacturers go from prototype to product faster when it comes to in-car information systems, and the kit, like the VCMs that Nvidia is selling, has a modular design that allows for the VCM to be broken out and replaced as computing power evolves. This, Nvidia reasons, will allow cars that usually have a long development cycle to keep up with quickly improving hardware.

The Jetson Pro main board supports Linux and Android as well, and it comes with a touchscreen display and an optional digital instrument cluster display.

Enlarge/ Developers will get to check their systems on something that looks like this Jetson Development Kit.

Megan Geuss

While this may not seem like much to the average consumer, who will likely never interact with an automotive development kit, Nvidia had two demonstrations of the types of programs that can be modeled for potential use in a car on such a kit.

In the first, a loop of video taken from a car on the highway was processed to show the speed and distance of other cars in the vicinity. Shapiro said that someday soon, a car will be able to process such visual information in real time and, say, beep an alert at the driver if they’re getting too close to a car, or if they're coming in too fast on a slowing car.

Nvidia's second demonstration showed a car that can detect when you’ve hit traffic. When it does so, it will go into a sort of “stop-and-go cruise control,” so the driver no longer has to be hitting the brake all the time. (As someone who grew up in Los Angeles and returns to that city frequently, I resisted the urge to shout "Shut up and take my money!")

Shapiro assured me that this feature only works in a single lane of traffic—it won’t move you over to the next lane if those cars appear to be speeding by (although that’s only ever an illusion anyway), nor can it be used to maneuver non-highway driving. But still, it’s easy to imagine that for all of the flashy press that Google’s self-driving cars have received, this is the way self-driving cars will become a reality: piece by piece, until consumers trust the machines enough to let them do most of the driving.

Which brings us to the more-distant future. In Nvidia’s showroom, the company had an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) on display, which will in fact detect humans and other obstacles that pass in front of the car’s field of vision, using a constantly spinning laser sensor to assess the surrounding area. Such a system would naturally take an awful lot of computing power, and the as-yet-unreleased Tegra K1 SoC is the cutting edge system that the company says will be able to navigate such a car autonomously.

Announced this January at CES, the 64-bit Tegra K1 will have 192 CUDA cores and should have computing power comparable to Nvidia’s GeForce GT 630 or 635 dedicated GPUs.

Although a car with Tegra K1 in it is a long way off, it's nice to dream, and if the present informs the future, I'm looking forward to buying a "gently used," decade-old, self-driving car with 100,000 miles on it in a decade or two (or three). You have to have dreams, after all.

This seems less "future" and more gimmicky. As far human driven vehicles and visualization technology goes, I'd be way more excited to see improved HUDs or even completely replacing the windshield with a display, and then integrating beyond-human visual range sensors. Infrared, millimeter wave, enhanced low light imaging etc could be combined to allow drivers to have clear views in the densest fog, rain, or darkness. No more surprise running into deer or moose at night, or pedestrians/anyone else by the road without reflectors/lights. They'd all show up clearly on IR/radar. Velocities & distances of other vehicles could be made visually clear, it could be instantly communicated when they changed. The car could warn about drifting out of lane (or about another car doing so). All blind spots could be eliminated, and in the case of a fullscreen display system designers would be further freed to optimize the cabin for safety, comfort, and the overall vehicle aerodynamics without needing to be concerned about affecting the driver's ability to see.

Short of self-driving cars, that's the sort of thing that seems like it'd provide a real practical leap forward in everyday (or night) driving. Being able to play movies or browse the web in your car (vs phone/tablet/notebook) seems rather less valuable, to put it mildly.

Buying an expensive car that still has a Tegra 2 in 2014 is one reason why this solution verses a dumb display connected to your smartphone isn't that great of an option.

I agree. The idea of buying a data plan for your car connectivity also seems somewhat silly compared to the idea of tethering your car’s systems to your smartphone.

I can see why you might want to do that, as a car has a larger antenna and isn't limited by battery power, so it will get much better reception. Only problem is the ridiculous charges they are asking for, and the fact that cars are not carrier-neutral. Like I'd even want to tie the purchase of a car to one of those companies...

I dot not see the need for 4G except for bragging rights or tethering... ...and who, that can afford this price range, needs tethering in their car? Surely their phone already does it.

...and I think Audi has it right with buttons and not touchscreen buttons...Its really hard to get touchscreens to register, when your finger is bouncing around in a car with tight suspension, without taking your eyes off the road an on to the screen.....

Which, given there is no color "true-black" display, means you go to two problems in the dark: finding what you are trying to hit and then adjusting back to the road's lighting...

Curious that the Aventador's center console has a button to switch it into two of Europe's most mundane cars, the Strada and Corsa.Pictured: Ritmo (aka Strada) & Corsa. Two cars voted mostly likely to sport the "My other car is a Lamborghini" sticker.

Buying an expensive car that still has a Tegra 2 in 2014 is one reason why this solution verses a dumb display connected to your smartphone isn't that great of an option.

The question is: What would you do with the extra power? If there is need for more power, due to a new feature, they will use it. Else it is overengineering. If you are able to save only 1 $ on the part you are developing, you did a great job.

Curious that the Aventador's center console has a button to switch it into two of Europe's most mundane cars, the Strada and Corsa.Pictured: Ritmo (aka Strada) & Corsa. Two cars voted mostly likely to sport the "My other car is a Lamborghini" sticker.

Curious that the Aventador's center console has a button to switch it into two of Europe's most mundane cars, the Strada and Corsa.Pictured: Ritmo (aka Strada) & Corsa. Two cars voted mostly likely to sport the "My other car is a Lamborghini" sticker.

I care less about the power behind the interface and more about the interface itself; without a doubt, car manufacturers consistently make the absolute WORST interfaces - buttons to back out of menus in unintuitive places, scrolling through lists with up and down buttons when a giant knob is right there, confirmation buttons being random "OK" or pushing the knobs in… it's a mess. You would think they'd take a cue from the absolutely dead simple but highly navigable iPod (the original, non-touch). The scroll wheel worked logarithmically in each direction so you could scroll rapidly through huge lists. The giant button in the center was "enter/OK", and the menu button was "go back". Toss in some sort of keyboard input and that's pretty much all you need.

Oh and as much as I like touchscreen interfaces, it seems like a car is the worst place for this - tactile feedback is important when you're supposed to be paying attention to the road.

I agree with most of the comments on here. The thought of having inbuilt system seems pretty archaic. I would have much preferred to be able to dock an iPad, android tablet or my phone. When the phone is docked with their proprietary app starting up and phone and cellular all activate ( Bluetooth sync) etc... This will enable the phone the device to charged on the move, kepp everything synced... And the best part about it would be that it can be up to date or customized by the users preference.

This feels as though it will be outdated as soon as you drive it out of the showroom.

This seems less "future" and more gimmicky. As far human driven vehicles and visualization technology goes, I'd be way more excited to see improved HUDs or even completely replacing the windshield with a display, and then integrating beyond-human visual range sensors. Infrared, millimeter wave, enhanced low light imaging etc could be combined to allow drivers to have clear views in the densest fog, rain, or darkness. No more surprise running into deer or moose at night, or pedestrians/anyone else by the road without reflectors/lights. They'd all show up clearly on IR/radar. Velocities & distances of other vehicles could be made visually clear, it could be instantly communicated when they changed. The car could warn about drifting out of lane (or about another car doing so). All blind spots could be eliminated, and in the case of a fullscreen display system designers would be further freed to optimize the cabin for safety, comfort, and the overall vehicle aerodynamics without needing to be concerned about affecting the driver's ability to see.

Short of self-driving cars, that's the sort of thing that seems like it'd provide a real practical leap forward in everyday (or night) driving. Being able to play movies or browse the web in your car (vs phone/tablet/notebook) seems rather less valuable, to put it mildly.

Almost everything you described already exists in current cars on the market today.

I'm familiar with the BMW 6 series, so I'll use that as example. But I'm sure other manufacturers have similar tech.

* it has a color hud projected onto the driver side windshield.* infrared camera combined with computerized detection monitors and notifies you of deer/animals or pedestrians and even applies brakes if collision is imminent. * you could pull up IR view on monitor but it's not needed for the detection system to operate* car has cameras on bottom that monitor road lines and alerts driver via vibration motors in the steering wheel if the car is drifting out of lane* it has sensors around the car that monitors distances to other cars and calculates relative speeds. this can be used in conjunction with cruise control to maintain safe distance even if cars merge ahead of you, reduce speed when traffic slows down, speed up when traffic gets moving again, and break suddenly if for any reason traffic stops suddenly in front of you and collision is imminent * blind spot sensors notify you of any vehicles in blind spots

the non-us market version even combines the road line detection with automatic cruise control to allow the car to steer itself when the speed is low enough (such as during heavy traffic)

Starting in a couple of years all cars (in the USA) will have backup cameras - many do already, Manufacturers want to do something with those screens when the driver isn't going backwards, so why not put navigation or other applications there.

In addition, manufacturers seem to have decided that fancy computer interfaces are a selling point. My wife's car has a bunch on non-auto related applications which seem to be updated regularly - at least in the number of them if not in quality and utility.

Also, many people don't want to have to plug in their phone/tablet each time they start driving, as it also means finding a good place to locate it so that they can see the device without blocking something else, like air vents or console controls.

Adding applications is inexpensive as they already have the screen available. They just need an inexpensive processor and input mechanism to drive the applications. Granted that the cars in this article are low volume, but for high volume manufacturers (Toyota and GM each make 10 million vehicles per year) saving a $1 per car translates in to $millions of extra profit. Hence the reason for least expensive processor that will do the job.

Buying an expensive car that still has a Tegra 2 in 2014 is one reason why this solution verses a dumb display connected to your smartphone isn't that great of an option.

The question is: What would you do with the extra power? If there is need for more power, due to a new feature, they will use it. Else it is overengineering. If you are able to save only 1 $ on the part you are developing, you did a great job.

It's important to consider that cars have a much longer life than most electronics does. The average age of cars on the road in the US currently is slightly above 11 years. Given that these cars cost between $90k (Tesla) and about 1/2 a million for the Aventador, I'd want to know that the manufacturers didn't skimp on the SoC they used so that future upgrades to the UI and system in general will enable continued improvement for at least 6 years or so (ideally more, but we know that won't happen). This isn't Ford's Sync we're talking about here...

Also, if you're familiar with some of the more advanced tools that exist out there, you will know that the potential for other uses is huge. If you've ever used Torque on Android, you'll know what I'm talking about. BMW is offering a similar package (minus the ECU code reading) on the M3/M4 where you can record your track performance a la Gran Tourismo and analyze/chart it on the car's system. I believe Chevy was talking about the same thing on the 'Vette but I'm not sure if it ended up coming through in the latest version. But that's just the beginning, the infancy of what will be possible. I'm pretty excited about things like enhanced reality in vehicles for example, if done right and with an eye on usefulness and not ad bombardment.

And as others have stated, I don't see the point of a dedicated 3G/4G connection, instead of convenient docking spot that would accommodate micro USB and Apple's connector (or just micro USB, the EU is moving to phase out multiple different connectors anyways...). This also allows the phone to charge.

Curious that the Aventador's center console has a button to switch it into two of Europe's most mundane cars, the Strada and Corsa.Pictured: Ritmo (aka Strada) & Corsa. Two cars voted mostly likely to sport the "My other car is a Lamborghini" sticker.

I care less about the power behind the interface and more about the interface itself; without a doubt, car manufacturers consistently make the absolute WORST interfaces - buttons to back out of menus in unintuitive places, scrolling through lists with up and down buttons when a giant knob is right there, confirmation buttons being random "OK" or pushing the knobs in… it's a mess. You would think they'd take a cue from the absolutely dead simple but highly navigable iPod (the original, non-touch). The scroll wheel worked logarithmically in each direction so you could scroll rapidly through huge lists. The giant button in the center was "enter/OK", and the menu button was "go back". Toss in some sort of keyboard input and that's pretty much all you need.

Oh and as much as I like touchscreen interfaces, it seems like a car is the worst place for this - tactile feedback is important when you're supposed to be paying attention to the road.

I kinda like that wheel functionality you described but surely Apple owns the patents to that so the associated cost depends on apple's willingness to license. (And how much it wants for it)

I care less about the power behind the interface and more about the interface itself; without a doubt, car manufacturers consistently make the absolute WORST interfaces - buttons to back out of menus in unintuitive places, scrolling through lists with up and down buttons when a giant knob is right there, confirmation buttons being random "OK" or pushing the knobs in… it's a mess. You would think they'd take a cue from the absolutely dead simple but highly navigable iPod (the original, non-touch). The scroll wheel worked logarithmically in each direction so you could scroll rapidly through huge lists. The giant button in the center was "enter/OK", and the menu button was "go back". Toss in some sort of keyboard input and that's pretty much all you need.

Oh and as much as I like touchscreen interfaces, it seems like a car is the worst place for this - tactile feedback is important when you're supposed to be paying attention to the road.

I kinda like that wheel functionality you described but surely Apple owns the patents to that so the associated cost depends on apple's willingness to license. (And how much it wants for it)

Since they no-longer use the technology in their own (flagship) products, I think they'd be happy to license it. But not to a competitor, and this sure looks like a competitor to CarPlay.

Curious that the Aventador's center console has a button to switch it into two of Europe's most mundane cars, the Strada and Corsa.Pictured: Ritmo (aka Strada) & Corsa. Two cars voted mostly likely to sport the "My other car is a Lamborghini" sticker.

It's small, light, and easy to modify — unlike a Lamborghini which is a big heavy pig full of heavy leather and a powerful engine ruined by a shitty automatic gearbox and traction control.

If I had a chance to drive a Fiat Corsa or a Lamborghini around Laguna Seca, I'd take the Fiat.

In the same vein, I'd take the Lancia Delta Integrale 16V. Rally-bred, with a nice turbo, stick, and AWD, it was a beast on the road, the dirt, and the track.

Also, while the box on the Lambo is technically "automatic", it's basically as good an automatic as it gets, and shouldn't be confused with a traditional automatic, since there is no torque converter. It's pretty close to the type of box used in F1 but weights a lot more.

No Bugatti's? Seriously (yeah, I get that this article isn't about that)? If we're talking about insanely out of anybody's reach cars that we all would love to own at some point (I just have to talk about my dream car):

nVidia is wasting time and money in this space. They have a few designs in very low-volume luxury models, which means they are expending substantial design and support resources to get customer systems into production for very low quantities of devices. If they can only win in high end cars, that means they are trying to sell their parts for too much, so they won't ever win mainstream high-volume cars.

Jen-Hsun is desperate to find someplace else to sell Tegra since no one wants them in cellphones or tablets (and I don't think the shield is really doing anything to stoke demand). They do well in graphics and apparently HPC (which I believe is highly profitable), so they should focus on that. I wonder how much longer shareholders and the board will let Jen-Hsun keep this failed experiment going.

Buying an expensive car that still has a Tegra 2 in 2014 is one reason why this solution verses a dumb display connected to your smartphone isn't that great of an option.

I agree. The idea of buying a data plan for your car connectivity also seems somewhat silly compared to the idea of tethering your car’s systems to your smartphone.

When you buy a Tesla or Lambo or even an Audi the $30/month for a cellular plan is irrelevant.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't think wealthy people like to just flush money down the drain. It's not always about whether or not someone can afford it. If you're already paying for mobile data, why pay again?

Besides, many of these cars are not 'rich people' cars. Audis are affordable for most middle-class, and Teslas are in the upper section of the Audi price range. People driving these cars aren't "wipe with dollar bills" types. Given the connection with Volkswagen-Audi Group, I wouldn't be surprised to see this as an option in VWs soon, either.

Curious that the Aventador's center console has a button to switch it into two of Europe's most mundane cars, the Strada and Corsa.Pictured: Ritmo (aka Strada) & Corsa. Two cars voted mostly likely to sport the "My other car is a Lamborghini" sticker.

Also, while the box on the Lambo is technically "automatic", it's basically as good an automatic as it gets, and shouldn't be confused with a traditional automatic, since there is no torque converter. It's pretty close to the type of box used in F1 but weights a lot more.

My main complaint is not the gearbox, it's actually the lack of a clutch pedal. There's nothing wrong with a computer shifting gears for me, in fact it's preferable since a good one will shift faster. But a computer controlled clutch simply sucks. Sometimes you need to gently ease into the next gear releasing the clutch over several seconds, other times you need to let the engine scream at the redline and drop the clutch, and occasionally you just want to jam it into a gear without using any clutch at all. An automatic clutch does not allow enough control, and while a good computer controlled gearbox is capable of all of those shift styles it often makes the wrong choice, and the driver can never be sure which one will happen when they pull the shift lever.

And I disagree with your claim that a Lamborgini is as good as auto gets. It's better than my mum's Subaru for sure, but the MP4-12C is the gold standard as far as I know, with it's double clutch box where you can pull the lever half way to tell the gearbox that you are going to shift up/down in half a second, eliminating some of the times when a computer makes the wrong assumption about what the driver will do next.

But what I really don't understand is why hardly anybody sells a road car with a proper racing sequential gearbox, where you have a clutch but can shift gears without using the clutch. Pretty much every motorcycle uses that style gearbox, and they work great. Why do cars only use them in professional race cars?

Looking forward to being killed while crossing the street by some tool surfing the net while driving.

The only thing more uncomfortable than sitting in the back of a Tesla Sedan is the constant fear of crashing into another car while the driver checks the web for flights, weather, sports scores, or weaves out of their lane because they're trying to touch the tiny little dated-looking anthropomorphic buttons for the A/C.

This is like a 4K TV that tries to be forward-thinking by including a built-in Netflix app, but comes with a CPU too scrawny to handle the HEVC stream that Netflix has mandated for 2160P content.

The expectations we have for our cars don't change nearly as quickly as they do for our phones and media devices. By tying themselves to something like this, they'll only accentuate how out of date the center console is. The Tegra chip they're using is slower than the one in the Ouya, for Pete's sake.

Buying an expensive car that still has a Tegra 2 in 2014 is one reason why this solution verses a dumb display connected to your smartphone isn't that great of an option.

I agree. The idea of buying a data plan for your car connectivity also seems somewhat silly compared to the idea of tethering your car’s systems to your smartphone.

When you buy a Tesla or Lambo or even an Audi the $30/month for a cellular plan is irrelevant.

Audi is putting the exact same systems into regular cars like the A3 or the A1. For people who buy these cars paying for an extra data plan may not be a deal breaker but it can definitely make these fancy features irrelevant and unused, like satellite radio is for many people. Making the cars tether to your phone and using your phone's power makes them much more future proof, but the downside is that it's hard for car makers to differentiate their product if all they offer is a dumb display.

Some of them have resigned themselves to doing that however, I think Honda for example has started offering a sub-$100 app for navigation instead of a $1000 nav system that will be outdated the day you drive it off the lot.

IMO car makers should offer a "dumb display" option and phone tethering in addition their proprietary custom systems. Then you get a choice.